


green eyes, you’re the one that i wanted to find

by gearsystem



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, First Kiss, Jon is an autistic mess, Love Confessions, M/M, POV First Person, Post MAG 120, s4 spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:28:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24409585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gearsystem/pseuds/gearsystem
Summary: Jonathan Sims woke up from his six month coma to a workplace even less welcoming that before. But Martin has something new (?) in his eyes that even Jon struggles to pinpoint.AU where Martin doesn’t steer into the isolation skid and goes back to the Archives to reunite with the Archivist.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 8
Kudos: 133





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> beta’d by my lovely spouse 💕

-Click-

Jon: Statement of Jonathan Sims, The Archivist. I guess. Isn’t everything a statement at this point? Anyway. It’s four in the morning, and I can’t manage to make myself sleep. So I’m doing this. … Jesus.

-Clears throat- I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but—

There’s something in Martin’s eyes. Not  _ something _ , not the thing that lingers behind my vision, that is now more part of me than I’m willing to admit. No, the something in Martin’s eyes is much more human. Much simpler. 

I heard what Basira and Melanie said back on that tape those months ago (almost a year ago now), and I heard what Elias said to Martin, about his…  _ attachment _ to me. Thinking about Elias knowing something so intimate(?) about Martin in particular does something to make my skin crawl. 

Eyes have gained an odd meaning to me in the last few years. I don’t know, something about my vision being used to appease a voyeuristic eldritch god does something to diminish my tie to the things that provide me sight. But, Martin’s eyes hold something else. Not an evil, otherworldly desire or the vacancy so often found in the things that pretend to be human. Martin has heterochromia, which does mean his eyes often garner more attention than the average person, but the subtle blue/green difference between them is quite… endearing almost? I don’t know, but I took note of the mutation the moment I met him, years ago now. 

The Thing, so to speak, in Martin’s eyes now is something I didn’t notice before… well, before. Maybe I was too busy getting caught up in stopping the Unknowing or perhaps it wasn’t there until recent months. Either way, it’s there now. It’s ever-present, and it’s nagging at me. I hesitate to call it a  _ sparkle  _ or a  _ glint  _ or anything that adolescent, but maybe he’s just always standing in such a way that the light hits at the direct centre of his pupils. No, that’s… that’s ridiculous.

At first, I thought it was just from Peter’s lurking effects, the Lonely nagging at his connection to the world. I worried for him. I thought, maybe it was just an effect of being in a comatose state for as long as I was, that I forgot how his eyes looked. But now, after what happened today, I’m convinced this isn’t just a trick of the light.

Despite what Peter wants, Martin does come check on me from time to time. The other day, hee knocked on my office door that was almost closed, and I hated the fact that I knew it was him before I even heard his footfall, but I did. 

“Hey, Jon, you have a moment?” he asked, voice a bit dull, as it’s tended to be lately. 

“Er, yes, Martin, come in,” I responded. He pushed the door open with his foot and I saw him bearing two cups of Earl Grey, steaming in our mugs. Mine has this ornate, dark green design over a lighter green background. His is a second-hand mug from the charity shop with a brown cow on it. 

He said some mumbled excuse for why he made me the cup of tea, but he and I both knew that he did it more out of a personal need for himself than because he expected me to want it. I took a much-too-hot sip of it anyway.

“I came in today, because I thought I should let you know that Peter is considering a change in position for me.”

“Oh?” is all I really managed to reply. It would be a lie to say that his new spot as Lonely Avatar Mr. Lukas’ PA didn’t put me off just a bit. I mean, it’s one thing to work in the Archive of the place, but another to spend endless days beside the man himself. 

“Yeah. He’s—well, he didn’t actually suggest it. I did.” I looked up at him the second he looked across at me, as if he was trying to send a message to me without saying it outright and I was supposed to pick up on it. Perhaps someone with better social skills than myself could understand without using beholding powers, but I found myself debating if I should See what he meant, or just ask. It seems, as of late, that I must make an active choice to do the latter or the Eye, you, will choose for me.

“Are you coming back to work in the Archives?” I replied. I decided for the more human approach. I always try to with Martin.

He nodded, just a small gesture, and he avoided my gaze yet again. He’s been doing that a lot, as well, like he knows that something in his expression has shifted. Anyway, we didn’t seem to say much after that. He made some unbearable small talk about the new library staff he hired (after Peter vanished the others) and I pretended it didn’t terrify me just how casual he’s been about all of this. But at least he was… making conversation, I guess?

His first day back down here was today, and that’s why I can’t sleep. He looked at me, or rather, I caught him staring, and it’s been… affecting me. 

Martin looked at me like he saw a ghost. 

We’ve spoken many times since I woke up from my coma, and he knows well that I’m alive and here as much as anybody else is, I guess. But his eyes caught mine and it seemed like he was looking at me for the first time. 

I don’t know. I can’t seem to shake it. I think it scares me, the fact that there was equal parts fear and… something else behind it. I may not be sleeping right now even without this incident, but this is the reason I’m attributing to tonight.

Recording ends.

-Click-

* * *

-Click-

Jon: Good morning, Martin.

Martin: Oh, morning Jon.

Jon: Do you want to head down to the cafe with me?

Martin: Er… sure, I s’pose.

Jon: I’ll get my coat.

-Click-

* * *

-Click-

Jon: Maybe the Lonely has just gotten to him. Even if he agrees to see me, he stares forward with this glazed over expression I’ve never seen before. Like he’s thousands of miles away from his own body, but going through the motions all the same. I can’t say I don’t understand, of course I do. My attachment to my own body has waned over the years, only aided by the scars lining every inch of me. But, the glossiness behind Martin’s face is different somehow. Willful, maybe, or pointed? He doesn’t seem to have it quite as much around Basira or Melanie. Part of me wonders if it is some supernatural force, or if he’s just not interested in me as a person anymore. However much of a person I am, anyway.

-Click-

* * *

-Click-

Martin: Oh, sorry, Jon I didn’t—

Jon: No, it’s alright, Martin, don’t worr—

Martin: I thought you were in the storage roo—

Jon: You don’t have to apologise, really I—

-Collective sigh-

Jon: Let’s start over?

Martin: I’ll just pretend I walked into the room right now instead of 10 seconds ago.

Jon: Yeah. Sure.

Martin: Hi, Jon, who I definitely did not see putting trousers on just now in your office. 

Jon: -chuckle- Hi, Martin. What is it?

Martin: Just, er… wanted to say that I got you a coffee.

Jon: Oh, thanks. 

Martin: It’s… it’s nothing. Have a good day, Jon.

Jon: You too.

-Click-

* * *

-Click-

Jon: It has come to my attention that you are recording conversations between Martin and I that are of little to no significance. I would be more surprised by this, but I know better than that at this point. The primary reason I even bring this up is because, from past experience, you seem to record things you deem… important. Somehow. Whether it be a statement or a secret conversation or something along those lines, you thrive on knowledge, not on interpersonal small talk. If it gets mixed in during the middle of something important, you’ll leave it be. But no, now you’re turning on at any point that Martin and I come into contact with each other. 

Stop it.

-Click-

* * *

-Click-

Martin: Oh. Hello. You’re still popping up around me now that I’m back down here? Really? -sigh- Why though? I don’t have a statement to record or an avatar to tolerate. I’m just… sitting here. In Jon’s office while he gets us lunch on the way back from the office supply store. … Is that? Do you want me to talk about him? Oh, God. Don’t tell me you’re… interested in my  _ feelings  _ now or something. Jesus, okay. You want me to talk about my feelings, then. Fine. Sure. 

I had to come back down here. It wasn’t for some big plan or for Peter or even for me. It was… I spent enough time away from him, didn’t I? But I got so used to talking to a blank face, closed eyes, a body that was so far from his brain that the doctors couldn’t manage to explain how it worked. I know it was… you, or whatever, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Jon he was before… dedicated to figuring out how all of this worked and how to stop the Unknowing and learn more and more about all this nonsense, isn’t the Jon that lives down here now.

I’m not saying he’s gone full avatar or something, not yet at least. Just, like, on an emotional level, you know? He’s… different. Not a bad different, but a different I didn’t want to let slip away from me while Peter separated me from everything, everyone. I need to see if this is… anything. Anything at all. Before you get a tighter hold on him. 

You satisfied, then? Is the Beholding obsessed with my inner turmoil all of a sudden?

-Sigh-

Oh, God, Jon’s probably going to listen to this, isn’t he?

-Click-


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon and Martin have to face the thing lingering behind Martin’s eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (It’s love)

The recorder clicks on in its same, familiar way. I pretend I didn’t somewhat wish for it.

“What the hell does _that_ mean? 'Not a bad different?' Christ. I’m never going to get any sleep it seems. Well, I guess that confirms that Martin isn’t… entirely uninterested in my wellbeing anymo—” I hear the door creak open behind me. _Shitshitshit._ I stop the recorder off like a reflex, and to my gratitude it doesn’t turn back on. 

“Jon? What are you?” Martin murmurs, voice laden with the grate of sleep. It does something to my chest.

“O-oh, Martin, I was just—” 

“Are you?—”

“What?”

“Have those things been acting weird lately around you, too?” Martin asks, pointed now. Goal-oriented. I want to curl around and run out of the room, but my body stills. 

“Define weird,” I say, stalling. Trying to cover up my dread with conversation as much as I can manage. 

Sigh. “Right. Magical tape recorders that appear out of nowhere to record us without our consent. Weird means something different now,” he replied with a dry air. 

“Yeah, just a bit.”

“Have they been showing up, even when you don’t want them to? Not just when you want privacy or want to keep something important a secret, but like… when nothing interesting is happening whatsoever? Like it wants to be your diary or something?” Oh God, he’s onto me. I want to hide, to go unconscious, to remove the ticking time bomb in my chest, beating at a rate I’ve come to know better in the last few years. 

“Er, yeah,” I mumble out through the agony in my head.

“Glad it’s not just me,” Martin replies, as if it isn’t agonising for me to have to face this.

“No, not just you.”

He sits beside me on the floor, the both of us staring into the blank patch of wall before us. We breathe, and I can’t tell if my heart rate has slowed or if we’re both breathing at the same unbearable frequency. 

“Have you listened to some of the stuff it’s recorded?” he finally gets out. 

“Erm…” is all I can manage.

“I can’t say I’m surprised,” he replies, but there’s no venom behind it. It’s reassuring, given how people have been to me in recent months.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay, I guess. Can’t say it would be fair if I was okay telling a malevolent entity, but not if you could listen in later,” he says. He isn’t wrong, I suppose. But that doesn’t take the guilt out of my never-ending spiral of thoughts.

“Still… sorry.”

“Do you listen to everything? Even from before… before.”

I hate the answer that I have to give. I hate myself for not telling him this before right now. Thoughts twist around my neck, my wrists, tying me to the floor, to confess to the indecencies I’ve performed to fulfill this bizarre hunger. 

“At some point or another, yeah. I can’t seem to help it. They’ll start playing on their own sometimes,” I respond, deadpan. Flat. There’s no excuse.

“Fair enough,” Martin says, matching my tone. The empty emotion behind the both of us drives me up the wall for some reason. I spent six months in a nonstop supernatural nightmare led by my eager patron, and now the world I’ve returned to exists in shades of grey, pale, _lacking_. I can’t stand it. Something red and passionate and warm rises in my chest, beyond the chilled ache of guilt swimming through my veins. 

“It’s not fair. None of this is fair. We don’t even have the luxury of private small talk anymore, private thoughts or private anything. And that’s in large part my own fault. How is that even sort of okay?”

Martin jolts a bit at my words, like it shakes him. Like he didn’t expect me to care about this. It burns my fingertips with emotion I can’t recognise. After a long, grueling moment, he answers me.

“I guess I can’t fully make myself hate the thing that kept you alive.”

_Oh._

I try to make words form on my tongue but they all scramble and dribble down my throat before they can escape. My breathing steadies a bit, which I take as a sign of _something_ resembling good. 

“I’m sorry I wasn’t… there. When you woke up. Or after,” Martin says. I am frozen in my own thoughts. “I spent weeks sitting, hoping. Holding onto some idea that I could be the one to rescue you from your own body, or mind, or both. I don’t remember how many nights I spent hunched over a stiff hospital chair.”

He scoffs, kind of. Half scoff, half pained laugh. I make myself look over at him, his eyes are darkened from the shadow of the light behind him. 

“I… I didn’t know,” I manage. 

“You didn’t?”

“No. I-I can See a lot more now, but I felt like looking back at people who came to see me was too cruel? I was as good as dead, and the words people say to me when I’m dead aren’t my business—”

“You aren’t dead, though,” Martin replies quickly, almost like he’s trying to convince himself of something.

“No, but—”

“My mum died.” The whiplash my brain endures is no more than metaphorical, and yet I swear my brain rattles in my skull at the words.

“Martin, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be. She was… she wasn’t good to me. If you heard what Elias said—it doesn’t matter. She died. And you were close, and I couldn’t,” he trails off.

“You let Peter—”

“Yeah. I invited it, to be honest. The busy work was better than the back pain of grasping at a hospital bed from a chair that was too small for me.” I let the sting from his words hit me like a cascade, and I know that it wasn’t my fault but it might as well be. 

“Why are you telling me this?”

“To be honest, I don’t know. You don’t owe me anything, Jon. You didn’t choose to get hurt, you didn’t choose to be in a coma, you didn’t… But I wanted you to know that I would have been there when you woke up, but I couldn’t be. And I’m sorry.”

A thousand thoughts sprint across my mind over and over, leaving me unable to catch onto any of them with clarity. 

“I’m sorry too,” is what I can find.

We sit in silence, not touching, not looking at each other. Air passes between us, as intimate as we can manage with the weight of everything. Then a thought lands in my lap, clear, collected, hopeful. It’s the first of its kind in far too long.

“Martin, I don’t want to presume things at four-thirty in the morning, but,” I take a deep breath. “Do you still feel the way you did, before?”

I can’t make myself look at him, but I hear a shaky exhale leave his lips.

“Are you asking me or are you _asking_ me?”

“Just asking. You don’t have to say anything you don’t—”

“I thought you were dead.”

“I know, Martin, but—”

“You were the one person I needed to come out of there alive, and you just…” I hear him choking up behind his words.

The urge to run away, to hide, returns with vengeance and I feel myself curling inward. I can’t bear to hear where the sentence ends. 

“I don’t need you to feel the same about me. I’ve never needed that, Jon, but if you’re just baiting me to answer you to fulfill some morbid curiosity—”

“No! Martin,” I start, trying my hardest to crush that thought at its core. He looks up at me with a start, and there’s that Thing behind his eyes again. The green in his right eye reflects back at me, and the blue dulls. I would call it an anomaly, but it makes too much sense in the moment. “I’m asking you because I wanted to know if I should let myself get carried away.”

“... Carried away?”

“Yeah, before I didn’t really have a chance to talk to you with the whole end of the world thing going on, and now things are different but I thought maybe, I don’t know,” I ramble, but I struggle to read what’s behind Martin’s expression. 

“Of course I still feel the same way, Jon.” 

A shooting pang in my chest spreads and I have to convince myself to keep breathing. I meet Martin’s eyes, the both of them somehow managing to shine despite the lighting of the room, and I’ve just now realised that he’s _scared. Of me._ Of my answer, or lack thereof. And I have to fix it, I have to take that fear out of his mind, but the words…

“I-I, er… reciprocate. I’m—” God I really am ruining this aren’t I? My sentences can’t form and my brain is jelly but I take another deep inhale, exhale, and Martin’s just frozen, next to me. Waiting. “I feel the same way about you, Martin.”

“You mean you…?”

“Yes. For quite a while now.”

I can’t explain the tremor that comes over him. As if something is being expelled from his very bones, he shakes out a sigh of relief that I have this unstoppable urge to rescue him from. I touch his hand (chilled, clammy) to show some delicate form of connection. 

“Martin, are you okay?” He turns his hand over, locking his fingers around mine. A small, albeit significant reassurance. After some minutes (seconds?) of silence, he replies. 

“Promise me you’re not a ghost?”

_Oh, God._

“As certain as I can be, I am not a ghost,” I state with desperate confidence. “Martin, look at me?” I coax, trying to get him away from whatever it is running through his mind right now.

He tilts his head up to meet me, and tears line his eyelids, hesitating to fall. 

“What do you see?” I ask, smiling, eyes open wide.

“I… I see, you? Oh. I see _you_ , Jon,” he says with a faltering, airy laugh. Tears fall onto his face, and I cup my other hand around his cheek (warm, soft). I can’t help but adjust myself to move closer to him, the both of us still sat on the floor of this quiet basement office. I wrap my arms around him, and I realise in that moment that this is the first time I’ve hugged Martin in far, far too long. His arms curl, slow, around me in return and there is a subtle dampness on my shoulder where his head rests. 

“I’m here.”

“Yeah. You’re here.”

I pull away a bit, tilting Martin’s chin up to meet my gaze again. His blue-green eyes do, truly, sparkle now, glinting in the almost nonexistent glow of the room. We sit in this for a moment, looking at each other the right way for the first time ever, I think. 

“I…” I try, my voice wavering under a new and somewhat expected bout of nerves. The next words I say are important. They aren’t ones I’m used to forming. “I love you, Martin.”

I see the breath catch in his throat for a second before a tentative smile spreads across his lips.

“I love you, too, Jon.”

Of the things I expected to do after telling Martin I love him for the first time, laughing was not one of them. It’s little more than a chuckle, to be fair, but it’s a laugh nonetheless. I laugh enough that Martin gives me a _look_ and I realise that he cannot read my mind.

“Sorry, sorry, I’m just… I haven’t felt happy in a long time,” I explain, being aware of the words I’m saying at the same time as Martin. I guess it’s true, though. 

“Oh,” he beams at me, his smile bright and wonderful. “Neither have I.”

There’s a pause between us where we just sort of fall back into a hug, amazed that touching is something we don’t have to hold back on now. Martin speaks first.

“Jon, erm… can I kiss you?” he asks it in such a timid tone, reminding me of how he was the first time he asked if I wanted a cup of tea. It’s gentle in a way that tugs at something in my chest. I pull away from our hug to look at his face again. 

“Yeah, of course you can,” I manage. I would kick myself for it sounding stupid, but then I wouldn’t be focused on how soft Martin’s lips are against mine. He breathes (warm, good) against my cheek as he tilts a bit to deepen the kiss, and my mind is blank with the feeling of him showing me this small but monumental affection. 

We keep kissing, and I move closer to him in a reflexive motion, he wraps an arm around my waist, and then I pull back a bit to catch my breath. Check in with the state of this new territory of affection. We’ve crossed so many barriers in such quick succession I’m unsure how I’m enduring the shift. 

“You alright?” he asks in that same gentle tone as before, but now his lips are a deeper pink and his hair is (by my own fault) messier. He’s never looked more beautiful.

“More than alright, I think.”

“Yeah, yeah. Me too.”

“Keep kissing me?” I try not to make it sound like I’m begging, but that’s somewhat dishonest. 

And he kisses me.

When I open my eyes again, the sun is peeking through the small, basement window of my office, and I could swear Martin’s eyes are glittering.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That’s it! For now at least. Might make this a larger story at some point when I’m a bit less depressed.

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr is @beholdingransom! Let me know if you enjoyed!!


End file.
